Models for the Economics of Resilience

Published

April 15, 2016

Author(s)

Stanley W. Gilbert, Bilal Ayyub

Abstract

Estimating the economic burden of disasters requires appropriate models that account for key characteristics and decision making needs. Natural disasters in 2011 resulted in $366 billion in direct damages and 29,782 fatalities worldwide. Average annual losses in the US amount to about $55 billion. Enhancing community and system resilience could lead to massive savings through risk reduction and expeditious recovery. The rational management of such reduction and recovery is facilitated by an appropriate definition of resilience and associated metrics with models for examining the economics of resilience. This paper provides such models, compares them, examines their sensitivities to key parameters, and illustrate their uses. Such model enables improving the resiliency of a system to meet target levels requires the examination of system enhancement alternatives in economic terms, within a decision-making framework.

Citation

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems

Pub Type

Journals

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DOI Link

Keywords

Community, Consequence, Economics, Infrastructure, Measure, Metrics, Recovery, Resilience

Citation

Gilbert, S. and Ayyub, B. (2016), Models for the Economics of Resilience, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, [online], https://doi.org/10.1061/AJRUA6.0000867 (Accessed October 31, 2024)